Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“Well, yes, but sounds like common sense. Besides, think how it’ll fester in my mind if I never find out.”
“That I can believe!”
“I’ll get you a whisky.”
“You can’t bribe a British policeman. Not often, anyway.”
“This is one of those rare occasions. Water or soda?”
“Is there any Malvern water?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Just a drop.”
“There you go. Why is it this case disturbs you so much, darling? Because the man committed suicide before you could arrest him?”
“No, I’m glad he did. Much better than prison and hanging.
You see, he really was after justice quite as much as revenge.
His sixteen-year-old son was shot as a deserter.
From all I’ve heard, if Colonel Pelham had sent him back to the medics, he’d have been diagnosed with shell-shock.
But Pelham was a tyrant and a bully. He convened a drum-head court martial, a summary trial without a judge-advocate to speak for the prisoner, not at all according to military regulations.
Your Sergeant Harriman volunteered to head the firing squad. ”
“My Sergeant Harriman? He was loathsome. I couldn’t stick him at any price. And that was before I knew he offered his services to shoot a defenceless boy. The colonel sounds as if he got what was coming to him, too.”
“He was a terror. So far, my sympathies are all with Rosworth. But his other two victims—the other officers Pelham coerced into supporting his verdict—Halliday might have been able to force the issue, if he’d tried harder, but he was constrained by his overwhelming sense of duty.
Devine was a nice lad, not so much older than Sammy Rosworth, and without much force of character.
I don’t think he’d ever have made captain if the carnage among subaltern officers hadn’t been so enormous.
They didn’t have much choice of lieutenants to promote.
He didn’t deserve to be murdered at the age of thirty-three. ”
“No.”
“By all accounts, Devine seems to have been haunted by Sammy’s death.”
“You’re right, it’s all horrible. What put you on to it?”
“As a matter of fact, you were the first to suggest a military link.”
“Alec, are you admitting I said something helpful?”
“A wild guess, on the basis of Pelham continuing to call himself colonel. But it stuck in my mind and we followed it up.”
“You did tell Mr. Crane, didn’t you, in mitigation of my being on the scene of the fourth murder? Was he furious?”
“I’ve seen him calmer,” Alec admitted. “What particularly irked him was its being the fourth murder, the one we’d hoped to prevent.
He seems to think your presence should have helped us prevent it, but in fact, we’d never have managed to link it to the others if not for the note you sent me from Saffron Walden. ”
“What? Explain!”
“We didn’t know the name of the sergeant involved. Harris or Harrison, our informant said. Then you turn up with a dead Harriman—”
“Darling, I don’t at all care for that way of putting it!” Daisy said indignantly.
He laughed, and went on, “In a town not very far from the direct route from Hertford to Harwich. A telephone call to the local police told us he’d been a sergeant in the War.
Later we found out from the school that he had not turned out to be an asset for a peaceable Quaker community.
Besides the bullying, he fell short in other directions. ”
“Do tell.”
“He drank. Not to excess, as far as I know, but Quakers tend to frown on the use of alcohol.”
“Yes, Bel says Miss Priestman doesn’t even like the girls eating wine gums. Shall I refill your glass, by the way?”
“No, thanks, love. I can feel her disapproval from here. The thing is, because of that general disapproval, Harriman didn’t go to pubs.
He drank at home. The other three were all kidnapped on their way home from the pub.
That was the obvious link between them. Ernie Piper insisted the pub connection was significant and important, and he turned out to be right. ”
“Good for Ernie!”
“Yes, and he got the kudos in my report.”
“Unlike me, I assume,” Daisy said mournfully. “Never mind, it really was a wild guess.”
“Also, you are not officially a member of the force.”
“I like ‘officially.’”
“Daisy!”
“Don’t worry, I won’t push my luck.”
“I wish I could believe that. Anyway, obviously Rosworth couldn’t use the same method in killing Harriman as he had with the others. He must have had difficulty finding him in the first place. Harriman moved about a lot and hadn’t been long in Saffron Walden—”
“He’s only been at the school since last September.”
“That’s right, whereas Pelham, Halliday, and Devine were all settled.
They all frequented free houses that served Hertford Brewery’s products, which makes it tempting to believe the gods were on Rosworth’s side!
We’ll probably never know how he tracked Harriman down, but apparently the sergeant had been seen more than once walking in Bridge End Garden.
Presumably Rosworth followed him there from the school or his house and seized his chance. ”
“You’re absolutely sure Rosworth was the murderer?”
“Oh yes. The landlords and the brewery confirmed the dates of deliveries to the respective pubs. The width of the wheel tracks in the Forest matches the brewery’s horse-drays.
And above all, Rosworth had a suicide note in his wallet that somehow survived being dunked in the River Stour.
It must have been written before he set out on his last journey, because he exulted in having killed the three he buried in the Forest, but where Harriman was concerned he fulminated and hoped he’d get a chance at him before he died. ”
“It sounds as if he always intended to do away with himself once he’d completed his mission. He wasn’t driven to it by the police catching up with him.”
“No, he probably laid his final plans when he read in the papers that we’d identified the bodies. He wrote that the only thing he had left to live for was getting Harriman. You could say he struck it lucky again, at the last possible moment.”
“What I can’t really understand is why he then drove to Harwich, where he must have realised you’d look for him if you’d worked out who he was.”
“Oh, everyone says he was a very reliable, conscientious, and honest employee. My guess is that he hoped to load the barrels into the ship before doing away with himself. It must have pained him to take the lot into the harbour with him.”
“Poor man!” Daisy sighed. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose your only child in such a horrible way. Let’s go up and give Oliver and Miranda an extra kiss. I’m glad you got home in time to play with them before bedtime today.”
“Mrs. Gilpin swore they’d never go to sleep after I’d overexcited them,” Alec said with a grin, heaving himself out of his chair. “Luckily they dropped off right away. Are they too young to enjoy playing in sand?”
“No, they love the sandpit in the Jessups’ back garden. Why?”
“I talked the super into giving me next week off. We’re going somewhere where he can’t find me. I thought we might take the twins to the Isle of Wight.”
“Marvellous!”
Daisy wasn’t thinking only about a week at the seaside with the babies—and Mrs. Gilpin, of course.
She thought of Pencote, Tesler, and Miss Bascombe.
She thought of the comparatively innocent victims: Sammy Rosworth; Halliday, slave to duty; Devine, living for so long with the boy’s death on his conscience.
She thought of Sammy’s grieving father, and of the brutal Pelham and Harriman …
On the whole, she considered, a kind of justice had been achieved, although, if they knew what she did, neither Alec nor his superintendent would agree.
She sighed. “Yes, marvellous idea,” she said. “On an island, with any luck, we should be safe from Mr. Crane!”